Beauty and the Baby. Marie Ferrarella

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      In that moment, Lori understood. She knew what had reduced the fifteen-year-old to this kind of despair and tears.

      Lori placed her hand on the girl’s shoulder. She was so thin, so small. And living a nightmare shared by so many.

      “Are you in trouble, Angela?”

      It was an old-fashioned term, Lori knew, but in its own way as appropriate today as it had been when it was first coined. Because a pregnant girl just barely in high school was most assuredly in trouble.

      The sigh was bottomless. “Yeah, I’ll say.” She sniffled. Lori dug into her pocket and pulled out a tissue, offering it to her. Angela took it and dried the fresh tears. Her voice quavered as she spoke. “A hell of a lot of trouble.”

      There were no indications that the girl was pregnant, but then, she hadn’t looked it herself until just recently, Lori thought. “How far along are you?”

      “I don’t know.” Angela shrugged restlessly. She looked down at the tissue. It was shredding. “It’s been over two months, I think.”

      “You need to see a doctor.”

      Lori could see the beginning of a new thought entering the girl’s eyes. “Yeah, somebody who can make this go away.”

      Lori shook her head. She didn’t want Angela thinking that she was cavalierly suggesting she have an abortion. Decisions like that couldn’t be made quickly.

      “No. Somebody who can tell you what’s going on with your body.” She took the girl’s hands into her own, forming a bond. “You might not be pregnant, it might be something else.” Although, Lori thought, other possibilities could be equally as frightening to a fifteen-year-old as having a baby.

      Thin, dark brown brows furrowed in confusion as Angela looked at her. “Like what?”

      She didn’t know enough about medicine to hypothesize. “That’s what you need to find out. Do you have a doctor?”

      Again the thin shoulders rose and fell, half vague, half defiant. “There’s this doctor on Figueroa Street. I hear she’s pretty decent.”

      Lori thought of her own doctor, a woman she’d been going to and trusted since she’d gotten out of college. Dr. Sheila Pollack had become more like a friend than just a physician. Angela needed someone like that right now, a professional who could clear up the mysteries for her and keep her healthy. Someone who could make her feel at ease rather than afraid.

      “All right, go to her.”

      Angela frowned. “Word on the street is she don’t do no abortions.”

      The girl’s mind was stuck in a groove that might not be the answer she needed, or would even want a few months down the line. “Don’t do anything hasty,” Lori counseled. “If you’re pregnant, talk to your mother.”

      Angela looked at her as if she’d just suggested she cover herself with honey and walk into cave full of bears. “Yeah, right and have her kill me? No thanks.” There was disdain in the teen’s voice, as if she’d just lost all credibility in the young girl’s eyes.

      When she moved to put her arm around the girl’s shoulders, Angela jerked away. Lori wasn’t put off. She tried again, more firmly this time. Angela needed to get a few barriers down. “She might surprise you.”

      Angela blew out a mocking breath. “Only surprises my mother gives me are the boyfriends she brings home.” She shivered.

      Had one of them put the moves on Angela? It wouldn’t have been the first time in history something like that had happened. Lori tread carefully, determined to do the right thing and not fail this girl she hadn’t known six months ago.

      “If you want, I can talk to your mother for you.”

      Angela buried her face in her hands. Lori sat beside her on the floor, stroking her hair. “What I want is not to be pregnant.”

      “First find out if you are pregnant.”

      Angela slowly raised her head and looked at her. “And then?”

      “And then—” With effort, Lori raised herself to her feet, “—we’ll go from there. One step at a time. When I see you tomorrow, Angela, I want you to tell me you have an appointment with the doctor.”

      The girl nodded, scrambled up to her feet and wiped away the last of the telltale streaks from her face. She looked at her for a long moment. And then, slowly, just the barest of smiles emerged. “You know, you’re pretty pushy for a pregnant woman.”

      “You’re not the first one to tell me that.” Lori slipped her arm around the girl’s shoulder and gave her a quick hug.

      She couldn’t get Angela’s face out of her mind. All through her instructions at the Lamaze class, Lori kept visualizing Angela in her mind’s eye. She could almost see her here at Blair, taking classes to prepare for the monumental change that lay ahead of her.

      The classes weren’t enough, Lori thought. Not for her and certainly not for a fifteen-year-old.

      The classes Lori gave with such authority taught woman how to give birth, but not what to do after that. Not really, not if she was being honest with herself. There was more to being a parent than knowing how to give a sponge bath to a newborn and that you should support their heads above all else. So much more.

      Lori walked down the long, brightly lit corridor of the first floor of one of Blair Memorial’s annex buildings. She’d waited until the last couple had left before locking up. The building felt lonely to her despite the bright lights. Seeing Angela huddled in a corner like that today had brought out all her own insecurities and fears. She had no mother to cower before, but there wasn’t a mother to turn to for guidance, either.

      She missed her mother, Lori thought not for the first time as she unlocked the door of her 1995 Honda Civic. Missed her something awful. For once, she lowered her defenses and allowed the sadness to come.

      With a sigh, she started up her car. Leukemia had robbed her of her mother more than a dozen years ago. A heart attack had claimed her father just as she was in the middle of college. By twenty, she was all alone and struggling to make the best of it. And then Kurt had entered her life and she felt as if the sun had finally come out in her world.

      Now here she was, eight years later, struggling all over again. The upbeat, feisty manner that the rest of the world saw was not always a hundred percent authentic. There were times which she really ached to have someone in her corner.

      She had someone in her corner, Lori reminded herself as she turned down the hospital’s winding path. She had Carson.

      Leaving the hospital grounds, she fleetingly debated stopping by the old-fashioned Ice Cream Parlor where she and the other three single mothers had so often gone after classes, eager to temporarily drown their problems in creamy confections sinfully overloaded with whipped cream and empty, sumptuous calories.

      It wasn’t nearly as much fun alone.

      Lori drove by the establishment. It was still open and doing a brisk business. The tables beside the bay СКАЧАТЬ